


Drenching What is Dark

by Skaldic_Jedi



Category: Fire Emblem Series, Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Angst and Romance, Angst with a Happy Ending, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Female My Unit | Byleth, Fire Emblem: Three Houses Blue Lions Route, Fire Emblem: Three Houses Blue Lions Route Spoilers, Fluff and Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Kissing, Light Angst, One Shot, Post-Timeskip | War Phase (Fire Emblem: Three Houses), Romance, Romantic Angst, Sad Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-28
Updated: 2020-06-28
Packaged: 2021-03-04 09:40:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,214
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24967615
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Skaldic_Jedi/pseuds/Skaldic_Jedi
Summary: Dimitri’s shivering by the time she gets him inside and helps him remove his leather and coat, stripping the cold damp things from his body. His clothing is soaked with rain. The scent of the wet fur fills Byleth’s small room with the powerful smell of a wild animal, like some poor creature seeking shelter from a storm.((Takes place following the Battle of Gronder))
Relationships: Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd & My Unit | Byleth, Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd/My Unit | Byleth
Comments: 6
Kudos: 135





	Drenching What is Dark

Dimitri’s shivering by the time she gets him inside and helps him remove his leather and coat, stripping the cold damp things from his body. His clothing is soaked with rain. The scent of the wet fur fills Byleth’s small room with the powerful smell of a wild animal, like some poor creature seeking shelter from a storm. He says nothing, murmurs the occasional _thank you_ under his breath while Byleth pulls soft blankets from the bed to replace his armor.

“Sit,” she orders, and he obeys, slumping down onto the edge of her bed. 

The fight has gone out of him. His one good eye will not meet hers, favoring the floor instead. Strands of his blond hair cling to his face, matted and dark, and she catches herself reaching out to slide them away, pulling her hand back before he sees. She isn’t sure the contact would be welcome right now, though something inside her whispers for her to try.

“Are you warm enough?” she asks, trying to gentle her voice. She isn’t good at this. Comfort. Reassurance. Dimitri once confessed that he’d thought her cold when they first met, and he isn’t the only person to ever accuse her of this. An entry in Jeralt’s diary claimed that as a baby, she had not cried, and now, even as her heart breaks for Dimitri, her eyes hold the line against tears. It makes her feel wrong, somehow. Inhuman. It’s not that she doesn’t feel, she just can’t seem to bring her emotions as easily to the surface as others. “Should I get more blankets?”

“No,” he says, finally looking at her. “Thank you. You’ve done enough, my friend. Certainly more than I deserve after everything that I’ve—”

She kneels in front of him, watches his eyes widen a fraction in surprise. Or perhaps, fear. “Stop it. We all deserve compassion.”

“Is that what this is?” he replies, his voice low. Outside the rain drills into the roof. “Compassion?”

She is startled by the sudden, gripping need to touch him. And maybe to be touched in return. Byleth knows battle and war: the angled bite of a sword, a lance’s punch. She has never known physical contact that did not carry the threat of violence. Five years ago, the first time a bubbly Annette had thrown her arms around her in a hug, excited over mastering a new skill, Byleth had reached for her blade. Even after her pupil had gone, Byleth left her hand on the hilt, the quiet darkness inside her warning of some imaginary danger still to come.

“Yes,” she answers. Her mouth is dry as she reaches for his hands, hanging sullenly between his legs. He swallows as her fingers lace with his, and he does not pull away. “But,” she adds, “it’s more than that, too.”

“Professor...” Dimitri whispers.

Byleth almost winces at the title. “Please don’t call me that. I haven’t been anyone’s professor in a long time. I never wanted to be your professor, either.” It’s not until she’s saying the words out loud that she realizes they’re true. She never realized you could just _speak_ emotions, even if you couldn’t necessarily show them.

His mouth compresses to a pained line. “I see,” he says, turning his one-eyed gaze from her. “I apologize for burdening you with my repulsive presence. If you’d have me leave here, leave the monastery altogether, you have only to ask it.”

The very idea is anathema, filling her with cold heat. Fear in the form of his permanent absence flashes through her like lightning, a memory of another time and place. In that life, had she lost him?

“That’s not what I meant,” she says quickly. She is afraid that at any moment he will let go of her hands, and vanish again into the storm, all that rage and grief howling inside his mind. “I don’t want you to think of me as a professor or advisor...”

“Then how shall I consider you?”

She leans in then, tentatively touching her lips to his. The kiss is brief, as subtle as drops of falling rain, but it unlocks something inside her, her throat squeezing tight as she pulls away. “However you want,” she whispers, at the same time recognizing the shape of her own desire, and accepting it.

Dimitri falls silent for a long moment, leaving Byleth searching his face for some indication of what he’s thinking or feeling. Unlike her, Dimitri has never been very good at hiding his true emotions, and now is no exception. 

His visible eye widens, mouth slack with surprise. He looks at her like he’s finally seeing her clearly, and Byleth stares back, relieved by his softening expression, and the returning gentleness in his voice when he speaks.

"I thought…" His gaze plummets, and he takes in a shaky breath. "I thought you, like everyone else, would hate me. The things I've done... Monstrous things. Unforgivable things."

"It's not in my power to give you absolution, Dimitri. No one can. But… you were alone then. Lost." Byleth lifts a limp strand of his hair out of his stricken face. He surprises her by catching her hand, holding it as tenderly in his hand like he had outside in the rain. Like she is something precious. "You aren't anymore. You can become the good man you always wanted to be, the good man you are. You don't have to live in the shadow of your guilt. There are people who love you and want to help you. Dedue. Gilbert. Felix…"

Dimitri makes a small chuffing sound.

"He cares," Byleth insists. "Even if he is bad at showing it."

"And you," Dimitri says quietly, almost like it's in question, though they both know it isn't.

Until now, she has struggled to see the Dimitri she knows and loves through the cracks in his hard shell of anger. Some days, the blackness of his grief made even those little glimpses impossible.

But he is here now, present at last. He is here with her. She doesn’t know if this is a side effect of having the soul of a goddess wrapped around her own, or if every lover recognizes the nearness of their second heart—but she feels the stressful pull between them suddenly ease, like she has been bracing a heavy plank and someone has finally lifted the other side.

"And me," she confirms, watching his blue eyes come back on with life.

Dimitri doesn’t wait a moment longer. He moves swiftly, grabbing her up from her knees and turning to lower them both onto the bed. He is strong enough to hurt her, even unintentionally, but disciplined enough not to. There is nothing careless in the way he anchors himself around her, distributing his weight to his hands and knees so as not to crush her. Byleth is not fragile—she is barely mortal, anymore—but his consideration of her comfort sends a wave of warm pleasure through her.

She kicks off her boots, and he does the same. As he leans down, his blanket acts as a drape, enclosing them in a small dark world all their own. A world without war, without suffering and all the loss that has shadowed them since the battle of Garreg Mach.

“I searched for you.” His mouth finds hers, willing and eager. “Long after the others gave up...” She pushes her fingers through his hair, ignoring the cold wet tendrils to draw him closer. Dimitri does not reject the invitation, settling comfortably between her legs, and everywhere their bodies meet delicious tension grows, like the energy of a building spell. “You found me instead.”

Like so many times before, Byleth is silent, unable to find the right words for a reply. _It broke my heart to see you in that state_ , she wants to say. _Your body may have returned to Garreg Mach but your soul remained lost. I missed you even when I didn’t know I needed to._ These words and others are too heavy to lift out of her chest, too vulnerable. Too honest. But thankfully, talking is no longer required.

Hands do the work of speech from that moment forward, communicating every desperate desire that has laid dormant between them for so long. It is only when Dimitri shrugs out of his undershirt and skillfully begins helping her remove her own clothing that Byleth briefly comes back into herself, remembering all that has happened. In that moment when they are apart, reason finds a path through her overwhelmed senses, rousing her better judgement. Sothis no longer speaks to her, but in her place Byleth hears the warning voice of her own heart.

“Dimitri.” 

She places a hand against his bare chest, halting their progress. His heavy breaths press ridged flesh into her palm. Scars. He is covered in them, a swarm of cuts and slices, wound after wound. All the leftover evidence of his desire to hurt and be hurt in return. But she will not be another weapon he can use against himself. She wants to be a safe haven, not an escape.

“Have I done something wrong?” He sounds so young then, his expression consumed by worry.

“No. No, it’s not that.” Byleth slides out from underneath Dimitri, letting the shock of the cold floor against the souls of her feet wake her completely from the dream of a few minutes prior. It’s an effort to get the words out right, and make him understand. “You just suffered a tremendous loss. You need time to grieve. Time to sort out how you feel—how you _truly_ feel. I should have been more careful with you tonight. I’m sorry.”

He catches her hand as she’s moving away. His palm is rough, callused from years of holding a lance. “You have nothing to apologize for. But you are mistaken about one thing,” he says in a low, serious voice. “I know how I feel. About you, at any rate. I’ve known since that night in the goddess tower. Do you remember?”

“You wished for a world where no one would be unjustly taken from the ones who love them.”

“And that we would be together forever.” His thumb runs over her knuckles with such tenderness, it scatters her thoughts. But only for a moment.

“You were joking.”

“I only said I was joking to save face.” Dimitri smiles halfheartedly. “I was a student, and you, my esteemed professor. It would have been inappropriate to admit how I truly felt, and I had no expectation that you shared those feelings. But as you recently observed, you are no longer anyone’s professor—least of all mine. And I am not a boy anymore, afraid of how his feelings may be perceived.”

Byleth allows Dimitri to draw her back to him, but instead of joining him on the bed, she takes his face between her hands. He stares up at her with so much hope she swears she feels her dead, slumbering heart jerk awake, beating at least once. She wants him to touch her again with the same desperate fire as before, but a soul cannot heal if it is always burning.

“ _Start at you mean to go on_. My father’s advice. Beginnings matter, Dimitri. If whatever exists between us is true it will survive the wait, but I won’t love you between a corpse. I won’t lay with you and your ghosts.”

“I... understand,” he says hesitantly, brow thoughtfully furrowed. After another long moment, he asks with uncharacteristically timidness, “May I stay? Only for the night. I promise to behave with proprietary and honor.”

Byleth nods, fighting a smile at his seriousness. “I know you will.” 

And he does for as long as he is awake, limiting himself to the bedside closest to the wall, and keeping the broad expanse of his back between them as she climbs in beside him. It takes him a long time to drift off, but Byleth even longer. She listens as the rain lessens, quieting to a dull contented murmur before finally closing her eyes.

She is almost asleep when she feels Dimitri shift, migrating toward her even in slumber. Byleth welcomes the absent prince into her arms, warm affection flooding her chest when she feels Dimitri finally relax, his breath soft against her neck as he settles more comfortably into his dreams.

Shortly before dawn, Dimitri rises wordlessly and gathers his dry belongings. As Byleth waits beside the open door, unsure what to say as he approaches to leave, he saves her the trouble of finding the right words, leaning in to place a grateful kiss on her cheek.

“I do,” he whispers, “mean to go on. I will make things right. And then, I hope, we will find our own new beginning.”

“I wish for that, too,” Byleth replies.

Dimitri departs into the misty courtyard as the sun edges over the roofs of the monastery, drenched in gloried sunshine and carrying himself with dignity and the promise of better days. Byleth also steps free of the building’s shadow, shielding her eyes against the day’s bright hopeful glare. But she does not look away, watching for the moment she knows is coming. The moment Dimitri will look back.


End file.
